Here are the NYT Connections hints and answers for Wednesday, October 22, 2025, game #864. The board contains familiar service words, terms about changing something to fit, several kinds of ants, and four words that pair with “copy.” Hints come first so you can stop before the full solution.
Today’s 16 words
Spoiler warning: the board is below, followed by progressively more revealing hints and the answer key.
- FASHION
- WRITER
- PASTA
- SHAPE
- PHARAOH
- TAILOR
- FIRE
- WATER
- GAS
- CARPENTER
- ELECTRIC
- MOLD
- TELEPHONE
- CAT
- RIGHT
- ARMY
Hints for the four groups
Try these in order, from least revealing to most revealing:
- Common services.
- Made to measure.
- Different types of a common insect.
- Begin with a word that means duplicate.
What are the answers for today’s NYT Connections groups?
These category names reveal the groupings without yet listing every word:
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- Yellow: Utilities
- Green: Adapt to fit one’s needs
- Blue: Kinds of ants
- Purple: COPY____
Full solution for Connections #864
The complete board, category labels, and answers below are reported by both Forbes and TechRadar.
- Yellow — Utilities: ELECTRIC, GAS, TELEPHONE, WATER
- Green — Adapt to fit one’s needs: FASHION, MOLD, SHAPE, TAILOR
- Blue — Kinds of ants: ARMY, CARPENTER, FIRE, PHARAOH
- Purple — COPY____: CAT, PASTA, RIGHT, WRITER
How Connections works
Connections asks you to sort 16 words into four groups of four. The groups are color-coded by difficulty, and a fourth incorrect guess ends the game, according to Forbes’ contemporaneous guide.
A contemporaneous Forbes guide described the game as going live at midnight local time and being playable on the NYT website or Games app. It also reported that archive access required an NYT All Access or Games subscription at the time; access and subscription terms can change, so check the current NYT listing for today’s details.
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